Pompeia Paulina

He tells him he has fled the city because he felt the first signs of a fever coming on and he confides something very personal.

He didn't leave for his own sake, but for his wife's, Paulina.

She insisted.

She told him he had to look after himself.

A famous philosopher, for years an advisor to the emperor, telling his friend quite simply that he'd done what his wife told him and that she'd been right.

Then he writes a few lines you wouldn't expect from a Stoic philosopher.

He says that, knowing Paulina's life depends to a great extent on his own, he has begun to take care of himself for her sake.

that his wife's love has obliged him to love himself more.